MUNICH (dpa-AFX) - The financial investor Paul Singer wants to participate in the planned takeover of the laboratory services provider Synlab according to the pattern he is known for. Singer has direct and indirect access to 6.5 percent of Synlab shares via his investment company Elliott, according to a voting rights announcement published by the company in Munich on Thursday. Synlab is facing a complete takeover by the financial investor and major shareholder Cinven. The latter wants to buy the shares it does not yet own for ten euros each. Singer is known for securing shares in companies that are about to be taken over, for example in order to obtain a higher price in a so-called squeeze-out.

Part of Singer's strategy is to publicize his involvement, and in many cases his hedge fund also publicly calls on management to take certain actions. However, it is often not clear how many shares Singer owns. A notification of voting rights is only required above a threshold of three percent of the shares. In recent years, there have been a number of takeovers in this country in which Singer has made money from a shareholding. One example is the radio tower company Vantage Towers, which is about to be completely taken over by a company backed by the previous parent company Vodafone and the financial investors GIP and KKR.

The British telecoms group Vodafone already had unpleasant experiences with Singer when it took over the cable network operator Kabel Deutschland for billions. The British company only bought Singer and investors who had followed his strategy out of Kabel Deutschland, which had already been acquired in 2014, at a high price in 2020 after years of stagnation.

Majority shareholders are often willing to pay this price so that the minority shareholder can no longer stop or disrupt the company's processes. Singer also holds large blocks of shares in automotive supplier Hella, which was recently taken over by French company Faurecia. Another well-known example from the past is the purchase of the pharmaceutical manufacturer Stada by the financial investors Bain and Cinven. Singer's method was also successful with crane manufacturer Demag and computer manufacturer Medion.

In the case of Synlab, the share price had already fallen from the 10 euros offered in the past few days and climbed to 10.84 euros. After the announcement of the voting rights notification, the share price rose to 11.04 euros. Most recently, however, it was again slightly below the 11 euro mark./zb/he